The Edge of Nowhere (30 page)

“I’m looking for someone called Laurel Armstrong,” he said. “Is that name familiar to any of you?”

Becca felt herself turn into a block of concrete with a pounding heart. She knew the need for instant escape, but nothing about her body worked except her eyes and her ears. The kids would say no, of course, and then the undersheriff would be at her table, and she didn’t know how she would keep her face from broadcasting everything she was trying to hide.

But then a little miracle happened. Halfway across the new commons, a table of stoner boys started to give Jenn McDaniels a bad time. Clearly, they hadn’t noticed the undersheriff’s coming into the room because one of them grabbed Jenn by the arm and made kissy faces at her while another wailed at top volume, “Derric, oh Derric, be tah-
roo
to me
now
,” as if he was singing a country song, to which he added, “For Jenn misses you like a calf misses a
cow
,” and the rest of the boys began laughing like hyenas.

Becca recognized the boy with a grip on Jenn’s arm. She’d been with him on the ferry. He’d hassled Derric during lunch one time, too. Dylan, Becca thought. His name was Dylan.

Jenn jerked away from him. She snarled, “Get a grip, Dylan,” to which Dylan replied, “Hey,
you
get a grip.”

Another boy said, “What a dyke,” as a third said, “Grip
what
? Bet we know, freak.”

Undersheriff Mathieson saw all of this. Most everyone heard it, too. The undersheriff got up from his seat and went over to the boys. He said, “What’s this all about?” and the way he said it told everyone that he meant business of the you’re-in-trouble kind.

Dylan turned the color of eggplant. The other boys started to stammer. The undersheriff leaned over their table and got right into Dylan’s face. He said in a loud voice, “I asked you what this was about. You were singing about Derric, so how d’you know him? What’re your names? Were you there when he was injured in the woods?”

Dylan went instantly from eggplant to white. Jenn sneered, “Yeah, Dylan. Were you
there
?”

This set the undersheriff off even more because he said, “Was Derric meeting you there? You better damn well tell me if you—”

“Hey. Chill, dude,” one of the other boys said.

Dave Mathieson made a move toward him. That was when Ms. Primavera intervened. Becca didn’t know where she’d come from, but she put her hand on Undersheriff Mathieson’s arm, and she said something to him in a very low voice. Then she said to the boys, “You have some place to be, I think,” and she ignored Jenn McDaniels altogether.

The boys got up like kids with their pants on fire. The undersheriff put his hand briefly on Ms. Primavera’s where it still rested on his arm. Becca saw their fingers interlock, and then Ms. Primavera dropped her hand to her side. The undersheriff said something to her and, just like that, they left the commons. Jenn remained, a lone figure with the stares of the other students resting upon her. She spun around and left by the doors that led to the theater corridor and the band rooms. No one said another word to her.

THE BAD PART
was that Jenn had chosen to leave by the very same door used by the boys who’d been giving her a bad time. Becca saw this and knew what it probably meant. There was unfinished business in the air.

She had a moment of indecision. Jenn was a real piece of work, and Becca owed her nothing. But she’d been trying, at least, to do
something
to help Derric. That was a mark in her favor, wasn’t it?

Outside in the corridor, Becca saw that the boys who’d been confronted by the undersheriff had gone no farther than the doors that led to the band rooms. These were close to the girls’ lavatory, and she could see that Jenn was headed there. But the boys saw this, too. They approached her and surrounded her.

“What’s
with
you anyway?” Dylan demanded.

“What’s with the clipboard?” another added. “You some kind of school
official
now?”

Jenn said to them all, “Why don’t you guys shut up and do something useful?” and she tried to push through them.

“With
you
?” Dylan laughed. “Good idea!”

Two of the other boys grabbed her arms and her clipboard fell to the floor. Dylan started to chant, “She wants it, she wants it. Do it to me, do it to me, Derr-
rick
!” as the other boys moved their hips suggestively.

Becca threw her backpack to one side. She shouted, “Hey! You guys leave her alone!” because she could see from Jenn’s face that she was perilously close to crying.

“Ohhh! It’s the dyke’s
wife
!” one boy yelled, and another boy cried, “Bacon Grease Hair with legs!”

They laughed stupidly. But the diversion of Becca’s interference was enough. Jenn twisted away from them and dashed to the restroom.

The boys went for Becca but the band instructor came out of his classroom at that moment and his sharp “What’s going on out here?” was enough to send them scurrying like rats off a sinking ship.

Becca watched them go, only dimly hearing the band instructor say to her, “You all right?”

She nodded, but the truth was something else. For as the boys made themselves as scarce as possible, Becca had a glimpse of something that made her breath catch in her throat. The boy Dylan was wearing a pair of sandals. The sandals were exactly the same as Seth’s.

THERE WAS NO
real time to process this, not with the band teacher standing there waiting for Becca to respond to him. So she said thanks and grabbed up Jenn’s clipboard and her own backpack. She ducked into the lavatory to find the other girl.

Jenn was bent over one of the washbowls. She swung around in a flash. She was crying and Becca knew instinctively that this wasn’t good. A tough girl like Jenn McDaniels crying? Everything, Becca knew, was about to get worse.

She wasn’t sure what approach to take, but it didn’t matter. Jenn spoke first.

“What d’you
want
?” she snarled. “Why are you
following
me? God, you’re such a
pathetic
piece of trash with your ugly glasses and your stupid dyed hair. You don’t
belong
here. You don’t fit
anywhere
. Why’d you come here,
anyway
?”

The force of Jenn’s words stopped Becca from saying what she wanted to say: about Dylan, about his sandals, about the forest and the footprint she’d seen and Saratoga Woods itself. So she merely extended the clipboard to Jenn. Jenn didn’t take it.

“What?” Jenn cried. “
What
? You think I need you to fight my battles? Leave me
alone
. You butt in everywhere and
no
one wants you around. Don’t you get that, fattie?”

Becca set the clipboard on the floor. She knew the best course was to get away. But Jenn wasn’t about to have this. As Becca turned to go, Jenn raced around and planted herself squarely in Becca’s path.

“Why’d you follow me? What do you
want
? I know what you’re trying to do, you know. It’s only obvious to everyone.”

Becca drew her eyebrows together. Finally she was able to speak. She said, “I don’t get—”

“Oh, yeah right. You don’t
get
it. You just go up there and read your stupid book to him and act like you’re not trying to do anything at all except practically get into the bed with him and we
both
know what that’s all about, don’t we?”

“That’s not . . .” Becca began to back off.

This, apparently, was just what Jenn wanted. She shoved her. She grabbed Becca’s backpack and began to go through it. She said, “Where is it? Where’s that stupid book?” She dumped the backpack’s contents onto the floor.

“What book?”

“Oh
right
. You know exactly what I’m talking about. You play dumb but it’s all an act. When you have a chance—”

“You’re crazy,” Becca said. She bent to gather her things.

Jenn shoved her again. Unbalanced, Becca fell to her side. The earpiece to the AUD box was dislodged from her ear onto the floor. Jenn grabbed this. She jerked it hard and along with the earphone came the AUD box itself. Jenn hurled it viciously at the opposite wall.

“You’re a loser,” she shrieked. “You and your
books
and your music and your . . . your . . .” Tears sprang to her eyes. She ran from the room.

TWENTY-SEVEN

B
ecca was able to make it through the rest of the school day, but it wasn’t easy. When she rescued the AUD box, she found it badly damaged. It wasn’t broken altogether, but it didn’t work right. It offered only intermittent static.

As soon as school was over, she shoved the damaged AUD box into her backpack and got off the campus as quickly as she could. Without the box, she knew she was going to have trouble on her hands because during both Integrated Algebra and Yearbook there had been so much whispering flailing around in the air that she could barely concentrate on the teacher and she understood why her grandmother had said, “Cemetery time,” when she’d start howling and covering her ears and banging her head as a little kid.

So Becca knew where she had to go in order to be able to think about what she was going to do without the AUD box working right. She rolled the bike away from the rack and set off down Maxwelton Road toward town.

When she reached the cemetery, Becca left her bike at the edge of its main lane. She crisscrossed among the old monuments and markers, and she made her way over to Reese Grieder’s grave. It was covered by leaves from the maple and sycamore trees nearby, and Becca sat on a pile of them so that she could lean against the side of the stone.

She took the AUD box out of her backpack and examined it more closely. The back of it was smashed in. Three of the interior wires were loose and were going to need to be soldered back into place. The earpiece wasn’t wrecked, but the amount of work that it was going to take to make the device usable again felt, for a moment, insurmountable. Becca sighed and tossed the entire AUD box to one side, into the deep grass. She lowered her head to her upraised knees.

Truth was, she didn’t understand why Jenn McDaniels hated her so much. It wasn’t like Becca had done anything to her. She was just trying to wait for Laurel’s return, and in the meantime she was just trying to stay in school and be Becca King, someone completely different from the girl who’d left San Diego and all her friends to be on the run from Jeff Corrie. But now with Derric’s father in possession of Laurel’s name, Becca didn’t know what might happen.

More than anything, Becca wished she had someone to talk to about all of this but particularly about Jenn McDaniels. She tried to find something positive in what was going on, but the only thing she could come up with was that
if
Undersheriff Mathieson was on the trail of Laurel, he might actually find her and bring her back to Whidbey Island and protect her and Becca from Jeff Corrie once they told him the truth.
If
, of course, he even believed them. On the other hand, though, now that he had Laurel’s name, he might just go down to San Diego. He might find Jeff Corrie that way or he might just phone and ask him about Laurel, in which case Jeff Corrie was going to want to know why an undersheriff in the state of Washington was calling him about his runaway wife. If
that
happened, Jeff Corrie would turn up on Whidbey Island eventually. And if
that
happened, he was going to find her. Maybe he wouldn’t find her at first, but he would in the long run because he wasn’t going to rest, Becca knew, till he had found her and had dealt with her.

Everything felt black to Becca. Everything felt hopeless. She shifted her position and looked at Reese Grieder’s gravestone as if there might be an answer or two there.

Poor Reese, she thought. Her grave was sad. The stone had lichen growing on it. Her picture had mildew at its corners because the cover on it had sprung a leak. The grave itself was full of weeds. It was all so dismal. It seemed unfair that Reese would be left alone and forgotten like this.